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Open tournaments

While I’m writing this, IEM Katowice is happening for SC2. It is the only tournament there that has an open bracket. For those who don’t know, an open bracket allows for anyone to compete so long as they show up (sometimes they have to bring their own computers).

This style of tournament has been lacking in the modern esports scenes when it comes to PC games. League of Legends has effectively been shut down by Riot, making this impossible. But other games like SC2, CS:GO and Dota 2 can still run these types of tournaments. These tournaments give a special flavor of event as players or teams can play in real time and meet other competitor, which also gives a special social quality to these events that online qualifiers cannot emulate.

While SC2 tournaments don’t seem to be profitable enough for an organizer to run this kind of event often, CS:GO and Dota2 both can — and I think they should. These types of events are especially important in both those games for smaller regions to gain LAN experience, meet and learn from established players and build a stronger global community. Also by using this type of event in CS:GO, you already make your tournament unique compared to the rest of the tournaments trying to jam their way into the space. As for Dota 2, I think the obvious way to do this is to run a LAN for the open qualifiers for each region instead of having it online.